By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

FRESNO, Calif. — When the crowd in Bulldog Stadium is in full growl — as it invariably is when the University of Hawai'i football team plays here — Warriors' coaches say they have trouble imagining a louder, more frenzied road crowd.

"Fresno is probably already the (noisiest) of the places we go in the Western Athletic Conference," said Rich Miano, UH assistant coach, whose Warriors play the Bulldogs tomorrow night on ESPN.

So, imagine amping it up by 70 percent, and you have Bulldog head coach Pat Hill's vision of the future and an opponent's idea of decibel overload in the place they call "The Doghouse."

On a wall facing the door of his office, Hill every day sees his dream framed, an artist's rendering of what 41,031-seat Bulldog Stadium would look like expanded to 70,000.

He envisions one of the largest campus stadiums of any non-Bowl Championship Series school filled to capacity, and a vast revenue stream for the school.

While UH pays $800,000 in annual rent — seemingly the only Aloha Stadium tenant that still does — plus costs, to a state-owned stadium, the Bulldogs pay no one, keeping all the concession, parking, signage and other revenue that comes in.

While UH waits for the powers to be to decide what will become of aging, rickety Aloha Stadium, hopefully before it collapses in a rusty heap, the Bulldogs are planning their future without tapping taxpayers.

As Hill is fond of saying, "it wasn't raining when Noah started building the ark, so why wait?"

Athletic director Scott Johnson, blueprints in his office, has already set to work on securing a lead donor to begin the first installment, club seating in the end zone. That would get the Bulldogs started toward a 10,000-seat increase that would include a new deck on the west side and additional sky boxes. Cost: about $50 million with an additional $85 million-$90 million to make the jump from 50,000 seats to 70,000.

When you have an overflow crowd for Portland State, necessitating bringing in temporary bleachers, Hill said that suggests the need.

"We're operating at 98 percent of capacity for six years now, so I think we're ready," Hill said. "The area is growing every year (20 percent growth over the last decade). The demand to fill more seats is there, we just don't have the seats, or the sky boxes.

"People said we could never sell that many sky boxes (40) in the Save Mart Center, but they did," Hill notes.

What is remarkable about Fresno State is that all its major venues — softball stadium, arena, academic center etc. — are privately-financed, requiring no tax money to build.

The 18,000-seat Save Mart Center arena, which opened this time last year and cost $103 million to construct, is the largest privately-financed project in the California State University system.

Some day, the Warriors will return to find a bigger, more boisterous Bulldog Stadium. They'll probably still be paying rent and wondering about the future of their own homefield, Aloha Stadium.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.